Ludic Interaction in Doctor Who - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 157

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Ludic Interaction in Doctor Who
his song is ending, but the story never ends.
Ood Sigma , Doctor Who
As I have shown, the paratextual potential of board games must always be
tempered with an awareness of the particular mechanics of the game as they
apply to the media franchise. hat is, diferent games for diferent franchises
must it into the narrative imaginings of that storyworld/universe, but at the
same time must create unique gameplay situations to support and augment
player understandings of that universe. his inal chapter, then, will draw lines
of connection between these two concepts with the hope of broadening board
game media scholarship. In this conclusion, I explore how paratextual board
games facilitate ludic interaction with the original media text. A ludic interaction
demonstrates not the copying of a narrative from one medium to another, but
rather the transference of a particular identiication across a ludic landscape.
To investigate ludic interaction, I examine Doctor Who: he Interactive
Electronic Board Game and Doctor Who: he Time Travelling Action Game , both
based on new series of the eponymous British science iction television show.
Both games use game-controlled “interactivity” as a selling point. he Interactive
Electronic Board Game uses a randomized, talking TARDIS, the Doctor's blue
Police Box time machine, to manifest ludic interaction—an interactive process
of identiication with the original media product through the generation of
paratextual meaning. In comparison, he Time Travelling Action Game uses
an automatic, spinning game board to match speciic alien characters from the
show. In this way, it uses interactivity as a type of “media ritual” that formalizes
gameplay afect in the users. For Nick Couldry, media rituals are “any actions
organized around key media-related categories and boundaries … [that] act out,
indeed naturalize, the myth of the media's social centrality.” 1 He uses the examples
of live media events, media pilgrimages, and reality television to develop an